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Economy of the enterprise - Pokropivny SF

9.2 Scientific and technological progress, its general and priority directions

Essence-content characteristic of STP and STR. Potential opportunities for development and production efficiency are determined primarily by scientific and technological progress, its pace and socio-economic results. The more purposefully and efficiently the newest achievements of science and technology are used, which are the primary source of the development of the productive forces, the more successfully are the priority (with respect to production) social tasks of the life activity of society.

Scientific and technological progress (NTP) literally means a continuous, interdependent process of the development of science and technology, and, more broadly, the constant process of creating new and improving the technologies, means of production and end products used with the use of scientific achievements.

NTP can also be interpreted as the process of accumulation and practical implementation of new scientific and technical knowledge, a holistic cyclical system "science-technology-production", encompassing several areas:

• Fundamental theoretical research ;
• Applied research ;
• Developmental design ;
• Mastering of technical innovations ;
• Increasing the production of new equipment to the required volume, its use (operation) for a certain time;
• Technical and economic, ecological and social aging of products, their constant replacement with new, more effective samples.

NTPs are inherent in evolutionary (associated with the accumulation of quantitative changes) and revolutionary (due to leap-like qualitative changes) forms of improving technological methods and means of production, the final product. The evolutionary forms of STPs include improvement of individual technical and economic parameters of products or technologies for their production, modernization or creation of new models of machines, equipment, instruments and materials within the same generation of equipment, and to revolutionary ones - the replacement of machinery and final products, the emergence of fundamentally new Scientific and technical ideas, scientific and technological revolutions, in the process of which a transition to new generations of technology takes place.

The scientific and technological revolution (NTP) reflects the fundamental qualitative transformation of conditioned development on the basis of scientific discoveries (inventions) that have a revolutionizing effect on the replacement of tools and objects of labor, technology of production management, the nature of people's labor activity.

The content of modern scientific and technological revolution is most fully revealed through its features, presented graphically in Fig. 9.2.

General priority directions of NTP. Scientific and technological progress is always carried out in the interconnected evolutionary and revolutionary forms of it, is the determining factor in the development of the productive forces, the steady increase in the efficiency of production. It directly affects primarily the formation and maintenance of a high level of technical and technological base of production, ensuring a steady increase in the productivity of social labor. Based on the essence, content and regularities of the modern development of science and technology, it is possible to identify the general directions of the NTP characteristic for most branches of the national economy, and for each of them priorities at least for the short term (Figure 9.3).

In terms of modern revolutionary transformations of the technical basis of production, the degree of its perfection and the level of economic potential as a whole is determined by the progressiveness of the technologies used - methods of obtaining and transforming materials, energy, information, manufacturing products. Technology becomes the final link and form of materialization of fundamental research, a means of direct influence of science on the sphere of production. If before it was considered a supporting subsystem of production, now it has acquired an independent significance, having become the avant-garde direction of the scientific and technological revolution.

Fig. 9.3. General and priority directions of NTP

Modern technologies have certain trends in development and application. The main of them are:

• First, the transition to low-stage processes by combining in a single technological aggregate several operations performed previously separately;
• Secondly, the provision in new technological systems of little or no-waste production;
• Thirdly, an increase in the level of integrated mechanization of processes based on the application of machine systems and processing lines;
• Fourthly, the use of microelectronics in new technological processes, allowing simultaneous increase in the level of automation of processes to achieve greater dynamic flexibility of production.

Technological methods increasingly determine the specific form and function of the means and objects of labor, and thereby initiate the emergence of new directions of scientific and technical progress, displace technically and economically obsolete tools from production, generate new types of machinery and equipment, and automation facilities. Now fundamentally new types of equipment are developed and manufactured "for new technologies," and not vice versa, as it was before.

It is proved that the technical level and quality of modern machines (equipment) directly depend on the progressivity of the characteristics of structural and other auxiliary materials used for their production. Hence the huge role of the creation and wide use of new materials - one of the most important directions of scientific and technological progress.

In the sphere of labor objects, it is possible to distinguish such trends of the scientific and technical progress:

1. significant improvement in the quality characteristics of materials of mineral origin, stabilization and even a decrease in the specific volumes of their consumption;

2. Intensive transition to application in an increasing number of light, strong and non-ferrous non-ferrous metals (alloys), which became possible as a result of the appearance of fundamentally new technologies that significantly reduced the cost of their production;

3. A noticeable expansion of the nomenclature and a forced increase in the production of artificial materials with predefined properties, including unique ones.

The first trend is manifested in a significant increase in output of low-alloyed steel, sheet and heat-treated rolled products, expansion of the use of powder metallurgy, and non-ferrous rolled non-ferrous metals, which increased reliability and reduced metal consumption of various technological structures; The second - in the increasingly increasing use of both new structural materials, and aluminum, magnesium and their alloys, which allows several times (2-10) to reduce the mass of machinery (equipment), vehicles, etc .; The third (the most promising in its progressiveness and economic efficiency) - in the advanced development of the production of polymeric, composite (polymer with filler) and ceramic materials, which in comparison with traditional have higher thermal, abrasive and erosion resistance, lower specific density, inert to aggressive Environments, and often have absolutely unique properties, which makes them indispensable construction materials for many new types of equipment.

To modern production processes such requirements as achievement of the maximum continuity, safety, flexibility and productivity which are possible to be realized only at corresponding level of their mechanization and automation - the integrated and final direction of NTP are made. Mechanization and automation of production, reflecting a different degree of replacement of manual labor by machine, in its development consistently, in parallel or in parallel, consistently passes from the lower (partial) to the higher (complex) form.

In conditions of intensification of production, the urgent need for a multiple increase in labor productivity and a radical improvement in its social content, a fundamental improvement in the quality of manufactured products, the automation of production processes becomes a strategic direction of the scientific and technological revolution for enterprises of most branches of the national economy. The priority task is to provide comprehensive automation, since the introduction of separate automatic machines and units does not give the desired economic effect due to the remaining significant amount of manual labor. A new and rather promising integrated direction is associated with the creation and implementation of flexible automated production facilities. The accelerated development of such production facilities (primarily in machine building and some other industries) is due to the objective necessity to provide highly efficient use of expensive automatic equipment and sufficient mobility of production with constant updating of the product range.